SpinPoint Barracuda Series, Product Manual

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Barracuda Product Manual Rev04
35
Figure 5-2 Barracuda Functional Block Diagram
5.2.2.1 The Host Interface Block
The SATA Disk Controller provides direct interface to an SATA bus. It is compatible with ATA 7 Specs. It
provides a means for the host to access the Task File registers used to control the transfer of data between
host memory and the disk drive.
The SATA Host Interface Block can be programmed to execute various host read/write commands either
completely automatically without any DSP intervention, semi-automatically with minimal DSP intervention,
or manually with the aid of the DSP.
The Disk Controller has significant advances in ATA automation. The highlights of ATA automation
includes:
 Automatic data transfer management for multi-sector Read/Write commands without DSP intervention.
 Automatic execution of read commands (Auto-Read command execution) for cached data in the buffer
by matching the first sector.
 Automatic Task File registers updates during automatic multi-sector transfers.
 Automatic NCQ queue tag validation
The Barracuda supports PIO, DMA, and FPDMA data transfers. The supported DMA type transfers include
multi-word (MWDMA) and synchronous Ultra DMA (UDMA) transfers. The bus emulates automatically
switched between 16- and 8-bit mode while performing Read Long and Write Long commands at the time of
ECC byte transfers.
16-bit DSP
Disk Controller
Buffer Control Block
Ho
st I
n
ter
fa
ce B
lo
ck
Fo
rma
t Seq
u
en
cer &
R
ead
Ch
an
n
el
16/32-Mbyte
SDRAM
SATA
H
o
st
B
u
s (
3.0Gbps)
Disk Preamp
M
ot
o
r Control